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Question: Why should the states of unity, love, and cooperation be particularly important to us?

Answer: They are indispensable to us because we have to “advertise” them to each other by playing a game that allows us to enhance these states before afflictions hit us from behind. We draw a bright and happy picture on purpose. We don’t see this picture as of yet, but we can make the group influence each of us in a way so that we all want it. With the help of envy, jealousy, and pride, one can be forced to advance before afflictions strike him from behind. We really want to be stimulated this way.

It’s bad when suffering pushes us “from behind”; we prefer conscious advancement. We should build a group in which every member expresses and shares an opinion that unity and interconnection are wonderful, so we are the ones who deliberately approach the Creator by advancing towards Him consciously.

Question: So, where is the “freewill” here? Even if we run away from the blows that hit us from behind, even if we consciously move ahead and pursue our connection with the Creator, we still act out of our animate egoistic nature. How can we really detach from it and act differently (not egoistically), and manage to rise to the Creator’s level irrespective of our egoism? Where is the elevation over our animal nature here?

What does “voluntary participation” mean? How can we escape blows and afflictions, avoid pleasures and rise above them? Why is the state at which we are either “whipped” or “motivated by a candy” considered animate? How can we rise above the animate developmental level and grow sensibly?

Answer: Finally, we begin to realize that the Creator has prepared a perfect condition for us: the group. The group is not only a method of transitioning from love of friends to love of the Creator, but it’s a concrete place where we can implement freewill, a place where we “don’t depend” on our friends. We depend on the Creator; thus, we relate to Him in a good way, whereas, we “don’t depend” on our friends in the group, so this is the point at which we get an opportunity to advance. It’s based on the right attitude to the unity among friends—the kind of relationships in which we don’t get anything in return!

This is the point at which we finally realize the special condition that the Creator prepared for us at the time of the shattering of the whole, the complete creation into many fragments, granting them a chance to reunite. Only after they regain unity can they express free will without any kinds of sensations, either bad or good. Only then will they obtain a chance to rise above their nature. Only then![92981]From the Georgia Convention 11/5/12, Lesson 1